CHAPTER 70: IS THERE AN ABYSS IN THE ABYSS ? - 5

Pop.

Each orb dimmed and died, one by one, until none remained, plunging them into darkness, complete and unnatural, the void swallowing even the faintest glimmers.

Azareel couldn’t see the women anymore, not until Virelya stepped closer, her golden eyes a faint glimmer in the dark, her breath audible, steady but tight.

"That... wasn’t natural," she whispered, her voice sharp with unease.

"It wasn’t the Abyss," Sylvara added, her voice hollow, trembling as she clutched her shriveled vines. "It came from him."

Nyxsha growled lowly, her tail lashing somewhere in the dark, her golden eyes blazing faintly.

"This is weird... doesn’t feel like anything before," she said, her voice thick with suspicion. "Even the Abyss didn’t touch my senses like this."

The tension thickened, a presence pressing in on all sides—formless, soundless, but heavy, suffocating, and angry, like a storm held in check.

The corrupted angel finally moved, its foot scraping against the stone as it turned fully toward them, its warped wing twitching, dripping more fluid that hissed on the floor.

Azareel’s voice was quiet, steady despite the chill.

"Who did this to you?" he asked, his silver eyes straining to see the angel’s form in the dark.

A pause, heavy with centuries of pain.

Then the angel spoke, softly, as though caught between two breaths.

"They threw me here..." it whispered, voice trembling, tears streaking its face like silent rivers of grief. "When I failed to burn a city of sinners. I failed..." The words faltered, drowned in a soft sob. "I didn’t rebel. I didn’t resist... I just... failed."

"I didn’t hate them," it continued, its untainted eye shimmering with unspoken sorrow, while the melted half of its face pulsed grotesquely. "I just... didn’t kill fast enough."

It lifted its gaze, eyes hollow with regret.

Crimson tears—glowing, unnatural—cascaded down its ruined face.

Sylvara’s breath caught as the faint light from its tears revealed its features.

On one side, the beauty of a celestial face, glowing with divine memory; on the other, an abomination, pulsing with corrupted sinew beneath torn flesh.

Azareel took a step forward, but Sylvara’s trembling hand shot out, grasping his arm.

"Don’t," she hissed, her voice raw, desperate.

"I have to help him—"

"You can’t," Nyxsha interjected, her golden eyes aflame with fury.

"This isn’t sorrow. It’s poison. He’s become part of the Abyss."

The corrupted mist crept along the floor now, encircling their group, tugging at something in Azareel—something light, something warm.

He flinched, his silver eyes widening as the mist brushed his skin like cold fingers.

Then the angel smiled—not happy, not cruel, but a smile of certainty, chilling in its finality.

"You’ll see," it said, its voice a whisper that echoed like a prophecy. "I can still go home... if you die."

Azareel opened his mouth to answer, but before a word could leave—the angel stepped forward, just one step, and the ground cracked, a sharp fracture splitting the stone with a sound like breaking bone.

All the three women moved instantly.

Their monstrous forms erupting into a storm of fury and grace, the Abyss itself trembling under their weight.

A guttural snarl tore from Nyxsha’s throat, her body exploding in size—muscles stretching with a sickening crack, black fur erupting in violent waves cloaked in flickers of violet flame that scorched the air.

She towered, her twelve-foot frame swelling to over twenty feet, her jagged glass-like claws flexing with lethal intent, her maw widening grotesquely, rows of fangs gleaming in the dark like shards of obsidian.

Her twin-moon golden eyes locked on the corrupted angel, burning with primal fury that made the stone tremble beneath her paws, her tail lashing like a whip of fire.

Virelya’s skin rippled and tore, her lower half unraveling into coils of scaled flesh, pale and shimmering with etched runes that pulsed with unholy light.

From her shoulders bloomed six serpentine necks, each crowned by a cracked porcelain mask weeping thin black ichor, their golden, slit-pupiled eyes blazing with cold malice.

Her arms dissolved into writhing tendrils ending in clawed hooks, her fangs lengthening, dripping venom that hissed and melted the ground wherever it touched, leaving smoking craters in the smooth, unnatural floor.

Sylvara stood last—silent as death, her skin splintering with a crack that echoed like breaking bone, revealing bark-like flesh glowing from within with crimson sap that pulsed like a heartbeat.

Thorned limbs unfurled into grotesque branches, blooming with twisted flowers, each petal etched with the screaming faces of devoured souls, their silent wails a haunting chorus.

A crown of antlered thorns curled around her head, her chest pulsing with red light like a heart that belonged to something ancient and divine.

Her scent, once sweet, turned sharp and iron-rich, like blood-soaked earth, her amber eyes blazing with a quiet, lethal resolve.

They didn’t speak.

They didn’t hesitate.

Even in their terrifying, Abyssal glory, they stood tense—poised, a wall of monstrous protection around Azareel, their forms radiating a power that made the void recoil.

Azareel could feel the shift, though barely—more than the ground beneath them cracking with decay, it was the very pulse of the Abyss itself, a tremor of fear that rippled through the darkness, recognizing the threat they embodied.

It feared them.

Their monstrous forms, a defiant rejection of the Abyss’s insatiable hunger.

But Azareel felt it too, just a little—not for what they were, but for what they were willing to become for him.

Their transformations were not a mere change.

They were a testament to an unwavering loyalty, a brutal devotion.

This thing before them wasn’t just a fallen angel—it was an echo of what Azareel could’ve become.

Its beautiful eye glistened with desperation, its warped wing dripping viscous fluid that steamed on the floor, its presence a wound that bled sorrow and rot.

The corrupted angel raised its hand, and darkness answered.

From its fingertips, the mist hardened, shaping into jagged scythes and thorned spears that twisted in the air like hungry predators, drawn to warmth, to purity...

to Azareel.